His Sleepless Nights (a whiff of cigarette smoke)
by ShinigamiForever
Summary: They both loved the sea. Long after Harry left, Draco still comes back to visit it, if only to try and find what's left of himself in the footprints. A bitter and rather strange Draco/Harry production.


His Sleepless Nights (a whiff of cigarette smoke)  
  
By: ShinigamiForever  
  
Warnings: Slash, some strangeness on my part, mostly safe. I guess.  
  
Disclaimer: You know the drill. Characters belong to Her Goddess Rowling. Not me. Plot and actual story does, however.  
  
Summary: They both loved the sea. Long after Harry left, Draco still comes back to visit it, if only to try and find what's left of himself in the footprints. A bitter Draco/Harry production.  
  
A/N: Dedicated to a fantastic online slash comic entitled "Your Wings Are Mine," found here at: www.aoihayashi.com. It's amazing good, the artist is extremely talented, I could never ever be that good. Sigh. Anyway, the fourth act of the comic is entitled "His Sleepless Nights" and has a cover page of Ethan Sakurazawa (one of my favorite characters) smoking. Go read the comic. It's more worth your time. By the way, feedback is craved for, in case you actually decide to read this.  
  
Enjoy.  
  
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We can say he loved the sea. Just as I do, does, am doing, whatever. The point: he loved the sea. I love the sea. I use past tense because I no longer know. It used to be he and I (me, himself, the two, nameless now) loved (love) the sea. Now, it's just me. Me, and this wide expanse of gray water.  
  
It's like this. He loved it because it was wild and feral and simply salt water, nothing more. He loved it because it was inanimate but also animated, not moving but living in the way only the sea could live, and because it couldn't betray him like a person could. Makes sense, but then again, anything can when it came to him. Looking at it from any angle makes sense when it involves him. Anything and everything and heaven and earth all wrapped up into one bundle.  
  
It's also like this. I love it because he once loved it and he might still love it. I love the sea because he used to trace pictures on the sand and run his toes through the water and laugh when it tickled him. I love the sea because the sun never glared at us when we were by it and he always was happy. That's why I love it. I like the color of its gray water and the patches of shells that he used to polish with his hands. Does this make sense? I think it does, but then again, I never make sense. Unlike him.  
  
So. He and I, in love with the sea, in love with each other. Was in love. Which tense? I don't know anymore. But anyway. Continuing on with the point.  
  
If we pretend (or I, whatever) that he was actually in love with me, we can say that he betrayed me. Broke up with me, dumped me, abandoned me, have as you will. Love with him was like love with the sea, sometimes smooth and tranquil, sometimes like the pounding wind in typhoons. Beyond that, even. Love with him was like love with the sea because-  
  
Well, it's hard to explain. See, you love the sea, but it can't love you back. It's incapable of doing that. Love with him was incapable of continuing. You can't love the sea, just as you can't love him. Or rather, you can love him, but he can't love you back.  
  
Toss that train of thought out the window. It's not getting us anywhere.  
  
A caprice. That's what we could call it. An affair, a fling, a toss up of the hat, a what-the-hell kind of situation. That's what it is. A sip of maddening alcohol on Friday nights, the addictive scent of powdered air. That could be it. An affair, like so many affairs the bees have with flowers and the affairs butterflies with sunny days. Conjure images of dying lilies in vases, their petals burnt by too many sunsets.  
  
An affair.  
  
How beautiful. But no.  
  
There. There's something else. Beauty. You look at him and you think, beauty. Like that. Purity and vanilla and emerald lights that glare out at you, never to forget. You dream of those eyes, like so many crushed leaves. Skin smooth like buttermilk. Like his voice, milk and honey. Someone to make a polygamist sorry he ever loved women. Cheekbones like a god. Beauty, you know? Flawless without any scratches. A work of Chopin.  
  
I think too much. I always do, will always do, and have done, all the past perfect and future tenses. At nights I light cigarettes and place them against my lips hoping they'll drown out the taste of metallic blood and caramel and sweet bitterness and incense lodged there. I inhale night air hoping to stop smelling him, with his apples and cinnamon and fresh warm brewed coffee on his shirt. I do a lot of things to stop thinking about him. I flirt with girls. Constantly. I take them and I break them and I leave them. Because none of them are like him, with his feminine grace that catches you breathless each time because he's so goddamn beautiful.  
  
And it's a beauty you want to forget and keep at the same time. That's why I'm here, of course. To forget and keep him. It's why I keep coming back week after week, month after month, year after year. It's why I said I wanted a house next to the sea when Dumbledore asked. I wanted to hear the soothing voice of the sea echo with his voice in my sleep, a lullaby of sorts. I wanted redemption and grace and sweetness again.  
  
It's why I love the beach.  
  
Sea air tastes like his skin and kisses. All sandpaper and orange cream pressed against my collarbone. And I am not a romantic but I think that's what he is. Romance and love and death and hatred and spite and all the good things paired with bad things until they become nothing but a menage of colored lights.  
  
Yeah. Kind of like that.  
  
So. Passion. And that's a good word too, the s rolling out off of your tongue and teeth until it encompasses the word. Heat in the hiss of air. Passionate. The word itself like lust.  
  
Except I don't want to think of him as lust. No, he's above lust, above need, a transcendental dove that perches itself in the ecstasy flowers. So. Passion. That's a nice word for him. And I am reduced to using words to describe him now, no more of green eyes and black hair and glasses and thin wrists and fingers that press against my bare skin sometimes when trapped under the weight of summer sheets.  
  
That's him. That's me. That's the reason why I love the sea.  
  
Outside, walking along the beach sand with bits of glasses cutting at my feet when the day is rainy. It's the only time when I get the sea alone to myself, when the sky wants to cry and I catch the little pit of melancholy right before we both sink. Comforting, to know that there is another out there waiting for pathos and his lover. Be it male or female.  
  
The sea. Rolling waves of unnamable emotion patched up with his memory, my lips still stained with his kisses that even cigarette smoke can't wipe away.  
  
Me and him. In love with the sea. When he left, the sea he took with him was ultimately my love. Given to him and never taken back. I try to come back for it. Maybe he'll give it back to me one day in the flash of a lip to lip where we transfer what thwarted dreams and empty promises we can still give to each other as the winds come crashing down on us. The flick of his hair against my chest, all raven silk and midnight rain.  
  
When he even haunts my dreams and my every breath, and when my eyes are always look for him, distracted by someone passing by with emerald eyes, and when I can taste his laughter in every second, and when his skin is the only thing I can feel.  
  
And yes, all that sometimes.  
  
He liked to walk on the beach sand barefoot.  
  
I trace someone's footprint in the sand. Who knows. It could have been his.  
  
A/N: All I can say is, congratulations. You read it. I'm so proud! Something I wrote as a reprieve from Phantasmagoria. Won't you leave a review? You've already come this far! 


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